One song, multiple albums

[Lowlander]

No this is not possible, but there are 2 date fields that can be used: Date & Original Date.

[ZvezdanD]

You could try my new Track Redirection script. It could be used for the "one song-many albums" situations and have an option to update playstats of one master track whenever you play some track which refers to it. Of course, I am using .asx files as redirection files that I suggested before.

[Agouti]

I think the best way would be to delete all but one copy of the mp3, and in the albums now missing the file have a xml which has a extension that MM would recognize as a link. We already have extra stuff tacked in folders for album art, not a new concept.

The param would have to be most likely be just the audio signature (MM already does that for duplicates), though you could also include artist and title incase the file gets modified (so you can attempt to recover). You can't really use path softlinks as described earlier - what happens when the directory or file gets renamed? Especially outside of MM?

The other way would be to use one of the custom fields you get with MP3's (have a look in properties, classification). You *do* get 5 fields, but most likely you would just use album name, track # for that album and maybe a row ID to the MM DB entry for that album - but you would get a lot of overhead in MM when you have an album and then have to search through the rest of the databse looking for any errant tracks missing from it....


If nobody else has made a move that way I'll have a go at making a script for the one or the other over my uni holidays.

The custom fields would be far easier, as the extra meta is kept within the files metadata , and not tacked somewhere that nobody else would ever support... but most likely do it both ways...


Yet another way is to (again using xml) have a little file in each album folder which stores a bunch of details about the album (which isn't normally stored as well, bonus!) like album rating, track list (which would be used to hunt down errant tracks) etc

[ZvezdanD]

I think the best way would be to delete all but one copy of the mp3, and in the albums now missing the file have a xml which has a extension that MM would recognize as a link.

Did you try my script? Did you even take a look at my description from specified link? My script has almost exactly what you wrote. It deletes all same audio files except one file and it replaces them with small XML based files which have included all MM fields. MM 3.1 with my script recognize such files, it displays all their metadata including album arts, it allows you to modify those metadata and even better it could play such files. Even more better, when you open such files into Windows Media Player, almost all important MM fields are visible (except rating). So, why do you think your solution would be better than mine?

[Agouti]

So, why do you think your solution would be better than mine?

My, aren't we touchy...

No, I hadn't looked at your script at the time (oh how mad you must be), but it doesn't do everything I'm after. Yes, it does the redirection rather well, i like the asx format - but if you had read through the whole post, and not just zeroed in and tried to start a flame, I'm after other things as well. More automation, for a start. What happens when the destination file is moved or renamed? Does the track still appear multiple times in the library (an issue for autodj, as the track will get more plays and not be subject to rules about playing the same track twice in a given length of time)? Is there any process for the recovery of the link? I like the idea of a file to store album info, like album rating, info blurb, album release date, classifications etc.

You have enough posts under your belt to not attack people after reading the first simply because they don't want to use your script... I'm exploring possible solutions, and while yours looks nice and polished and does it's job rather well, it doesn't achieve some of the things I'm after. I want to be able to play a particular album, and play all the tracks in that, but also tell MM to play a bunch of albums that contain the track and not have the track come up multiple times. I think I will just aim at a script for generating these searches/playlists and cleaning duplicate tracks out, based on bitrate/track length.

Space these days is only a minor consideration (for us poor souls who can't get tracks in FLAC), I'd really like (though it won't happen) to have multiple albums stored in the metadata, is such a fashion that MM and DAPs would also recognize it... because you can have the same track in slightly different version in multiple albums (a minute longer or shorter, or a different dub) so you may not want to delete the other versions, but that doesn't mean you want them to appear in autoplaylists and sync lists.

[ZvezdanD]

No, I hadn't looked at your script

No, I am not trying to start a flame, but you are. You came here with attitude "my solution is the best" almost immediately after I wrote information about my script. Two years nothing was happened, only empty talks and now when I spent my time writing this you are talking about same idea which I posted in this same thread two years ago. If you are too lazy to read just one post before yours and to follow supplied link and see what I made, I don't know why I should discuss about all of this with you. If you install and try mentioned script, you would see that it has almost all what you are suggesting. Even if it is missing some thing which you want to see, I think it is more fair first to post such request in the script thread, then to write completely new script which would do almost same things like mine.

Yes, I already read your first post completely and I cannot see that you mentioned any kind of automation. But, just for your information, this script has your newly mentioned automation. If you move files (whether they are masters or .asx's), paths are automatically updated and everything works fine. If you read my description in the first post of the script thread, you would know that. Yes, this works if you rename files as well. Yes, there is an option to recover broken links. Yes, you could choose an option if you want playstats to be updated for .asx files or master files whenever you play some .asx file. Yes, if you chose that option, the script will ask you if you want to transfer playstats from all .asx files to master files.

Speaking on idea to store album info, I don't know what is a connection with this kind of script since those things are totally unrelated. The independent script which would create files with such information could be made and could be used for all albums, not only for those which have duplicated tracks. There are also a solutions to avoid repeated playback of duplicates which are mentioned recently in the Scripting forum, and such solutions are not (and should not) be related with this kind of script (the solution with the .asx files is the simplest one - just create a Magic Nodes filter or auto-playlist which would not play files with an .asx extension). In meantime I added an option to create redirections for audio files (e.g. a .mp3 file which redirects to a .flac file), so you could use this script even if you prefer duplicates instead of .asx files. Now, do you have some real argument against my script?

[XCFan]

Let me apologize for putting a damper on this conversation, but the big thing I see, is that even though a track may be "duplicated" in multiple albums, I find that there are usually different versions (a Live Version, the Original Version, a Remixed Version, etc.) So the idea would be definitely to keep this optional, and while a great idea, as storage becomes cheap, it may become irrelevant....